


and so they fell (lay down, dearest)

by conspicuously



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: (a lot), Angst, Angst with a sort of happy ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, This Is Sad, it makes me sad, steve and diana both have to cope with their ptsd, steve is my small son, what could possibly go wrong
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-10 02:58:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11118492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conspicuously/pseuds/conspicuously
Summary: Diana wakes every day with a pain in her chest that feels like death, or at least she imagines. Her blue-eyed boy is gone and she is governed by his watch. Tick, tick, tick.





	1. chapter one: blue eyed boy

When Diana, daughter of Hippolyta, Princess of Themyscira, killed Ares, the God of War, the only thing she felt was relief. She swore, with the breath knocked out of her, that she would never let this happen again. She swore on the bones of the people she had let die. The sky began to change into a soft sunrise orange, peeking out beneath the dark clouds. She could not find hope in it this time. 

“Each sunrise is a new day, my niece. A new day to become better and kinder and stronger. A sunrise is hope, little one.” 

She was overwhelmed and exhausted and Steve, Steve was dead and she missed him more than sunlight on her cheeks. 

Maybe Zeus began to cry for his fallen children, maybe the death of his creations awoke him from his rest, and it rained fiercely and all the fires went out. He cried on the Germans and he cried on the British and he cried on Steve Trevor’s incinerated body. He cried on Diana’s bloody and beaten shoulders and Diana wept along with him. She cried for the corpses of the children, she cried for Antiope and she cried for the German boys and the British boys and the French boys. With the rain, her clay body began to melt away. Her skin ran over her armor, flesh melted off her bones. Clay is strong in sunlight, but not in the wet. Any potter can tell you that. She cried for Steve Trevor. Her shoulders, proud and strong, shook like a leaf in the howling wind and after a while she realized that the rain was not Zeus’ tears, but hers.

Her tears could not heal, and she resented her father, her mother for it. She was immortal and the strongest woman in the world, but she was not able to heal and she hated herself for it. She could not shape dust into man, could not kiss children’s scrapes better. She wished she could cry the world away like the men’s God, begin anew. Shape Steve out of clay and beg Zeus to bring him back to life. Alas, the gods were silent and her tears ran like blood on No-Man’s Land.

* * *

She walked back to Britain. At least, walked as far as she could. Despite her immortality, she could not swim the English Channel, so she took a boat across to the bleak, gray city that only seemed bleaker without Steve right beside her with his blue eyes the colour of the sea. She woke up with pains in her chest and she wondered if this was what dying felt like. She didn’t know, she would never know.

Samee offered to fly her home, but she thought only of the gas and the bullet that killed Steve and so she walked. Day after day, Diana walked on, hand pressed to her hear, fingers folded around his watched and she walked to the tick, tick, tick. She let his watch tell her what to do and she missed him.

It took her six days to walk back to Britain. She thought that maybe it would begin to hurt her heart less, as her grief for Antiope had lessened over the days away from Themyscira, tick, tick, tick. This pain was new and foreign to her and the long days of walking in the European fog only left her alone with the stabbing ache where her heart was supposed to be. When she slept in 600 tick increments, (she relied on that watch so heavily, she could hear the ticks in her sleep) she dreamt of the way Steve’s eyes looked under the aquamarine ocean, the way his eyes looked during the night in Veld, how they were soft and painful on the night he died. She could only dream of his eyes and the constant tick, tick, tick. 

It was cold, impossibly cold, and as Steve had explained to her, it got very cold during winter. She had never experienced this kind of cold, not in Themyscira. She wrapped herself in the clothes they had bought in London, when Steve had called her distracting and told the yelling men to avert their eyes and she missed him when the tip of her nose turned pinkish like his cheeks in the snow.. She whispered out a feeble prayer to whatever gods were left every night, begging them to bring Steve back, Steve Trevor with the soft sandy hair and eyes the colour of the sea. 

On November 11, eleven o'clock A.M., 1918, the armistice was signed. She stood in London, quietly, with Samee, Charlie, and Chief in a small circle, watching delighted people kiss their neighbours and the sky was filled with the Union Jack and happy tears of people who had not lost. Diana could pick those who had lost out in any crowd. They did not smile and they did not kiss their neighbours cheek. They were the crying mothers and confused children, wondering when their father would be returning home. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t right, but Diana couldn’t do anything except squeeze their hands in understanding with tears in her dark eyes. She missed him with her whole entire heart. Her slender fingers remained wrapped around his watch and she left the town square in time with the quiet tick, tick, tick. Time was a bomb. Time was a bomb that she could never defuse in time and so she watched all of them die.

* * *

Diana moved in with Etta Candy, clearly not possessing much material wealth in the terms of man. Etta cooked, Diana washed up. They had a small system, governed by the ticking of Steve’s watch. Etta would gently inquire if it perhaps was time to put it away, to bring closure, but time, Diana knew, would bring Steve back to her. In the end, it would. She could try.

Three months had passed since Steve’s death. She counted the ticks as a way to keep her sane. It was February and Diana had suffered through the man’s Christmas and smiled dutifully through the hordes of carollers. It had been seven million, nine hundred forty eight thousand and eight hundred ticks. She didn’t sleep much, if at all. In February, the crocuses came out. She was forgetting the sound of his voice, but his eyes were always blue and his watch never stopped ticking. It was February and the blue of the crocuses peeked out from the snow and Diana did not get out of bed for another two hundred fifty nine thousand two hundred ticks. She would wait and wait and wait for the azure of his eyes to look into her brown ones. She missed his lips on hers, his calloused hand wrapped over hers. She missed how he held her hands when he was scared, or how he held her close when they danced in Veld, or how a fleeting “I love you” were the last words she had and she never got to say them back. She missed him.

* * *

Perhaps she always knew that Steve wouldn’t make it back. He was too self-sacrificial, too good and kind. Despite how much she prepared herself for his death, nothing could ever cool the flames in the sky that burned onto her heart and the fire it fuelled in her soul. She killed Ares because Steve died; Steve gave her strength. Diana wasn’t quite nearly as strong now. She promised herself, though, that she would live until she found Steve, until the gods brought him back to her. She built herself on promises.

* * *

She visited the small memorial where soldiers’ pictures were hung. They were in place of proper burials, no bodies left behind to bury. Their pictures and smiling faces were water-stained and peeling off the church door, but nobody had the heart to take them down. Diana came every day and placed a soft kiss on Steve’s weather-beaten cheek, placed a flower beneath him. She came upon several crying people nearly every day. She understood that although time is supposed to heal all wounds, grief is a wound that time could do nothing for. She saw the screaming women every night in her dreams and she was never able to save them. Tick, tick, tick goes the bomb, and they are all lost.

It was cold and rainy, a brisk April day. April eleventh. The sky was grey, the streets were grey, the woolen jacket around her shoulders was grey. It had been five months since the armistice and Diana still wept over Steve. His eyes were fading in her dreams, the blue becoming more and more tinged with grey. It broke her heart. She promised to keep Steve more than a memory, more than a long-lost lover. Steve was alive. He was alive, he had saved today and he was coming home. Welcome home the glorious dead. 

Diana didn’t notice her knees buckle and her cheek rest upon the cobblestones. Tears trickled down her cheeks and she wept like she had days before the armistice, when the German and British boys were engulfed with the fire of Ares, the fire that Steve put out. She didn't notice the rain falling on her chestnut hair, didn't notice her shivering in her fine clothes that she hated. She crouched there on the ground, head pushed against the church door and she sobbed. Tick, tick, tick. Inhale, exhale. Wipe your eyes, little one, and begin again. 

Etta found her when the sky had dimmed from grey to black. Etta quite often reminded Diana of a mother hen, feathers all ruffled, clucking anxiously over her chicks. Diana didn’t know what she would do without her. She cried more in Etta’s warm arms that night and maybe she felt herself begin to heal. 

She knew, in her heart of hearts, that she would recognize his eyes anywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello friends!  
> i decided that after watching wonder woman, it was too sad for me not to somehow make it better. this is my first fic i;ve written, so i hope you enjoy it! thank you so much for reading!  
> until next time,  
> erykah


	2. chapter two: she promised him

London days were dull and grey, the weather never really changing, smoke rising in endless columns towards the fading sky. The people wore grey, the buildings wore grey, the sea wore grey. London was no longer mourning the Great War, but had fallen into a perpetual state of melancholy that Diana nearly found worse. As the death tolls began to be printed in the newspapers, the grey only grew heavier and heavier. Nearly one million boys who fought for the British crown, all of them dead. Total deaths, from all soldiers on both sides was over 8 million, roughly. They didn’t count civilians, the ones that Diana had so desperately tried to protect. There were too many to count, at least right now. It was no matter anyway, everyone knew there were millions of innocent people killed.

Steve Trevor had become a statistic, tick, tick, tick. One of the boys who fought for King and Country. He wasn’t dead. Diana promised herself that. She promised Steve that he wasn’t dead. In her sleep, she cursed Ares, cursed Zeus, cursed whatever god would listen to her screams. Yet, the gods were painfully silent and Diana sobbed into her pillow quite nearly every night. One shaking inhale, 2 ticks, a sob creaking out of her empty chest, 3 ticks. Sometimes, Diana cried so fiercely, the ticks of the only piece she had left were drowned out. Steve was not dead. He couldn’t be.

Etta would wake her in the middle of the night, the pale moon glaring through her window.

“You were screaming, dear,” she’d say gently.

Diana would apologize tearfully, Etta would pull the covers back up around Diana’s shoulders, give her a sympathetic glance and walk out. This happened every night and the bags under her eyes seemed darker than her eyes themselves. Still, she did not sleep, and still, Steve was alive.

* * *

As Steve held the gun in his shaking hand, a bullet ready to embed itself in canisters of mustard gas, he began to think. Thinking was dangerous, and he knew that, but he still thought. He thought of his mother and dead father, he thought of the tears that would run down her weathered cheeks when the letter would be opened by her calloused hands. He grimaced and held the gun a little tighter. He thought of his little sister, her pigtails that he would pull as they ran through the mid afternoon sun. He thought of his older sister. She was gonna get married when this damn war was over and he knew her fiance was a good man. He would never see her get married, but then he thought of all the parents who would bury their children, all the little girls who would never get married. His jaw clenched, and although he did not want to die, he liked to think he’d make his father proud.

And then there was Diana. Beautiful, fearless Diana. He thought of her cheeks under his fingertips and how undeserving he was of her. He thought of her walk across No Man’s Land and considered that maybe it was Woman’s Land. She was so ridiculously strong and her life made his death worth it. She was going to the save the world. He knew it. He promised her it. He liked to think that they would have gotten married, eventually. He had a wandering nature, never really staying in one place for a long time, but he had a way with the ladies and he spent every night with a new girl. He was above average, after all. He never thought he would die for a girl. He wasn’t the settling down type, but here he was. He had fallen in love with an immortal woman who could fling a grown man across the room and he was going to die for her. He only wished they had a little more time.

He breathed in, out, and his finger rested over the trigger. The flames enveloped him in the worst pain he had ever felt, like his flesh was being ripped from his bones and as he faded, he heard a scream loud enough to crack the Earth. He was blinded by a screaming white light and then he died. Steve Trevor burned.

* * *

It was Monday, April twenty-second, and Diana had spent her obligatory 18,000 ticks with her eyes closed, but never sleeping. Sleep was terrifying because it reminded her of her weakness. She was forgetting what his voice sounded like and her dreams only reminded her of it when Steve would speak, but her voice would escape his lips. She glanced at Steve’s watch on her wrist, read 8:22, and rolled out of bed. As habit, she brushed her hair, 100 strokes, as her mother instilled in her from childhood. She was on the 89th stroke when she heard screaming outside her window. It sounded remarkably like her name, a little garbled perhaps, but her name nonetheless.

Quietly, she picked up her shield, ran her long fingertips along its dusty edge, being that it hadn’t been moved from the corner of her bedroom since her return to London during the armistice. Beside it laid the Lasso of Truth and her Bracelets of Victory, forged from Zeus’ shield. They were equally as dusty and Diana took some amount of shame at their disrepair. But there was screaming outside Etta’s apartment and by the sound of it, it wasn’t the screaming of a child chasing his little sister as they ran after their ball. She picked her shield and weapons up for the first time in 5 months and eleven days. They were familiar and safe and they only did more to remind her of Steve, her beautiful Steve. She gritted her teeth and held her shield a little tighter, the metal enveloped in the dark robe Steve had bought for her many months ago.

She walked silently down the narrow staircase leading to the front entrance, and soon realized that the person who was screaming was also pounding on her neighbour’s door. 

“Diana! Diana! Diana! Please, please,” the voice begged with a horrific raspiness, “please, I know you’re here, I know you are. Please! Diana! Diana!” 

Every time the voice screamed her name, it would pound on the neighbour’s door. Thank the gods, her neighbour was a milkman and didn’t return home until noon; Diana couldn’t imagine if he was pounding on the other neighbour’s door, the woman who didn’t leave her bed until noon. As she watched the figure from the window beside her door, she watched them become more and more defeated with every blow.  
“Diana! Please, please, I know you’re here. I know you are. Please, just open the door.”

Diana opened the door, and with quiet strides she approached the figure, who she determined as a man. He still continued to scream, not aware of her presence to his left. As she moved closer, she observed that he was burned, all over his body, scars rippling down the right side of his face. His hair was left only in clumps scattered over the top of his head. His hands were bulky, covered in bandages that seemed to continue up his arms, underneath his tattered jacket. His lips were held taut and pulled awkwardly down his right cheek. He reminded Diana of the boys she saw while she was boarding the ship to get to the front. A lump rose in her throat and the swallowed it. She could not cry, not now. 

“Hello?” Diana said softly, as to not startle the man screaming her name.

He whipped around, as if Diana were holding a sword to his throat. His eyes were closed, squeezed shut, as if he were holding back tears as well. “Diana?”

“Yes, I am Diana. What is it you want?”

He held his arm out, as if searching for something. He took three lurching steps forward, gripping a cane in a white-knuckled fist. He nearly stumbled on a loose cobblestone and Diana reached out to catch him.

“Diana?” He whispered brokenly, with a catch in his voice. His voice was creaky and burned and Diana did not know why he knew her. He clung onto her arm as he righted himself, then grabbed her hand so tightly, she thought he would never let go.

“Diana, it’s me. It’s me. It’s me.”

“I — I do not understand. I do not know who you are.”

The man began to cry in earnest now, his bandaged hands shaking in hers. His distress was tangible, and despite the sounds of crying, no tears came out of his closed eyes.

“Diana, it’s me. It’s Steve. It’s Steve. Steve Trevor? Please, I know you know me. I know you do. I love you, it’s Steve. You know me. It’s Steve. Please, Diana, please—”

The ticking of the watch on her wrist was suddenly replaced with the sound of her heart beating in her chest and this man, this man who called himself Steve, his voice became quiet like it did just before he died, when the ringing in her ears drowned out his very last words. Her hand dropped out of his and her feet stumbled backwards, her hand on the hilt of her sword.

“No. No, no, no. You— you cannot be Steve. Steve is dead. I watched that plane explode and he died. This is some sort of trick,” Diana whispered. “You can’t be Steve. Steve is dead.”

The man laughed, swiping his hand underneath his running nose. It was a harsh, grating sound, but something about it was familiar and comforting but Steve was dead. 

She did promise herself that he wasn’t dead. And a promise was unbreakable. She said it herself. She said it herself. Steve wasn’t dead. She promised him, she promised herself. 

“Steve?” Diana said, a little louder than before. “Steve?”

He nodded slowly and cautiously. Diana reached out and gripped his hand and suddenly her vision was blurred with the tears she had held back for so long. She laughed breathily, almost in disbelief, a shaking, beautiful laugh. 

“Steve?”

“Yeah. It’s Steve, Diana. It’s me.”

Diana truly began to cry now, full, body-shaking sobs, and she threw her arms around him, and together they fell. They tumbled onto the ground and Diana sobbed into Steve’s shoulder. He ran his hands through her hair, through her curls that never seemed to fall out of place. He wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her impossibly close, breathing in her familiar scent through what was left of his nose. They stayed like that, in the middle of a nondescript London street, and Diana lost count of the ticks coming from Steve’s watch, still securely on her wrist. 

Diana cried quite nearly harder than on the day when the plane exploded and Ares died, her tears leaving a damp spot on the shoulder of Steve’s jacket, her hands balled into fists, clutching onto Steve’s jacket, as if it was her lifeline.

“I’m so sorry,” she wept, “I’m so sorry. I should have come to look, I should have looked harder before I left, I should have found you, I should have been better. I’m so sorry, I should have been on that plane, I’m so sorry, Steve. I’m so—” her voice broke off.

“Hey,” Steve said softly, lifting her chin up. “I’m here now. I’m safe. You’re safe. I’m right here.”

Diana looked at his closed eyes, running her hands along the burns that covered nearly his entire face, rough burns, melted skin, scabs that had yet to fall off, ran her hands along his patchy scalp, and she loved him more fiercely than she thought she ever could. She smiled, albeit tearfully, the first she had in months and months, and as she did so, he ran his hands along the curve of her neck, the sharpness of her jaw, the hollows of her cheeks. His fingers ran over her nose, her lips, her eyelids, all along her forehead, as if she was a blueprint to commit to memory. It had been 6 months and 15 days since she had felt his touch, and she craved it. She could spend eternity in his embrace, never moving from it for a second. They had so much time. All the time in the universe.

Steve breathed out shakily, and touched his forehead to hers, hands still on her cheeks.

Diana realized.

“Steve, can you see me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello friends!  
> firstly, i wanted to say that i am completely overwhelmed by all the support this fic has gotten! i never, ever expected so many people to leave kudos and comment and i hope you know that this means so much to me. you all never fail to make me smile.  
> so here's the next chapter. i'm so sorry that this took so long to get up, i've been busy with finals and getting ready for summer. expect updates to be fairly sporadic, as i'm away for all of july and most of august. this chapter is a little bit longer than the last one, and i hope you liked it!  
> until next time,  
> erykah
> 
> also, here's a link to a spotify playlist i made that i use to write this: https://open.spotify.com/user/blatantly-/playlist/5lZvdnV4qBCg1um3IsNgJ0


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